Since common names and those in ancient authors do not agree with botanical definitions, we must mistrust the assertions formerly put forth on the origin and early cultivation of such and such a gourd at a given epoch in a given country. For this reason, when I considered the subject in 1855, the home of these plants seemed to me either unknown or very doubtful. At the present day it is more easy to investigate the question.
According to Sir Joseph Hooker,[1254] Cucurbita maxima was found by Barter on the banks of the Niger in Guinea, apparently indigenous, and by Welwitsch in Angola without any assertion of its wild character. In works on Abyssinia, Egypt, or other African countries in which the species is commonly cultivated, I find no indication that it is found wild. The Abyssinians used the word dubba, which is applied in Arabic to gourds in general.
The plant was long supposed to be of Indian origin, because of such names as Indian gourd, given by sixteenth-century botanists, and in particular the Pepo maximus indicus, figured by Lobel,[1255] which answers to the modern species; but this is a very insufficient proof, since popular indications of origin are very often erroneous. The fact is that though pumpkins are cultivated in Southern Asia, as in other parts of the tropics, the plant has not been found wild.[1256] No similar species is indicated by ancient Chinese authors, and the modern names of gourds and pumpkins now grown in China are of foreign and southern origin.[1257] It is impossible to know to what species the Sanskrit name kurkarou belonged, although Roxburgh attributes it to Cucurbita Pepo; and there is no less uncertainty with respect to the gourds, pumpkins, and melons cultivated by the Greeks and Romans. It is not certain if the species was known to the ancient Egyptians, but perhaps it was cultivated in that country and in the Græco-Roman world. The Pepones, of which Charlemagne commanded the cultivation in his farms,[1258] were perhaps some kind of pumpkin or marrow, but no figure or description of these plants which may be clearly recognized exists earlier than the sixteenth century.
This tends to show its American origin. Its existence in Africa in a wild state is certainly an argument to the contrary, for the species of the family of Cucurbitaceæ are very local; but there are arguments in favour of America, and I must examine them with the more care since I have been reproached in the United States for not having given them sufficient weight.
In the first place, out of the ten known species of the genus Cucurbita, six are certainly wild in America (Mexico and California); but these are perennial species, while the cultivated pumpkins are annuals.
The plant called jurumu by the Brazilians, figured by Piso and Marcgraf[1259] is attributed by modern writers to Cucurbita maxima. The drawing and the short account by the two authors agree pretty well with this theory, but it seems to have been a cultivated plant. It may have been brought from Europe or from Africa by Europeans, between the discovery of Brazil in 1504, and the travels of the above-named authors in 1637 and 1638. No one has found the species wild in North or South America. I cannot find in works on Brazil, Guiana, or the West Indies any sign of an ancient cultivation or of wild growth, either from names, or from traditions or more or less distinct belief. In the United States those men of science who best know the languages and customs of the natives, Dr. Harris for instance, and more recently Trumbull,[1260] maintain that the Cucurbitaceæ called squash by the Anglo-Americans, and macock, or cashaw, cushaw, by early travellers in Virginia, are pumpkins. Trumbull says that squash is an Indian word. I have no reason to doubt the assertion, but neither the ablest linguists, nor the travellers of the seventeenth century, who saw the natives provided with fruits which they called gourds and pumpkins, have been able to prove that they were such and such species recognized as distinct by modern botanists. All that we learn from this is that the natives a century after the discovery of Virginia, and twenty to forty years after its colonization by Sir Walter Raleigh, made use of some fruits of the Cucurbitaceæ. The common names are still so confused in the United States, that Dr. Asa Gray, in 1868, gives pumpkin and squash as answering to different species of Cucurbita,[1261] while Darlington[1262] attributes the name pumpkin to the common Cucurbita Pepo, and that of squash to the varieties of the latter which correspond to the forms of Melopepo of early botanists. They attribute no distinct common name to Cucurbita maxima.
Finally, without placing implicit faith in the indigenous character of the plant on the banks of the Niger, based upon the assertion of a single traveller, I still believe that the species is a native of the old world, and introduced into America by Europeans.
[The testimony of early travellers touching the existence of Cucurbita maxima in America before the arrival of Europeans has been collected and supplemented by Messrs. Asa Gray and Trumbull (American Journal of Science, 1883, p. 372). They confirm the fact already known, that the natives cultivated species of Cucurbita under American names, of which some remain in the modern idiom of the United States. None of these early travellers has noted the botanical characters by which Naudin established the distinction between C. maxima and C. Pepo, and consequently it is still doubtful to which species they referred. For various reasons I had already admitted that C. Pepo was of American origin, but I retain my doubts about C. maxima. After a more attentive perusal of Tragus and Matthiolo than I had bestowed upon them, Asa Gray and Trumbull notice that they call Indian whatever came from America. But if these two botanists did not confound the East and West Indies, several others, and the public in general, did make this confusion, which occasioned errors touching the origin of species which botanists were liable to repeat. A further indication in favour of the American origin of C. maxima is communicated by M. Wittmack, who informs me that seeds, certified by M. Naudin to belong to this species, have been found in the tombs of Ancon. This would be conclusive if the date of the latest burials at Ancon were certain. See on this head the article on Phaseolus vulgaris.—Author’s Note, 1884.]
Pumpkin—Cucurbita Pepo and C. Melopepo, Linnæus. Modern authors include under the head of Cucurbita Pepo most of the varieties which Linnæus designated by this name, and also those which he called C. Melopepo. These varieties are very different as to the shape of the fruit, which shows a very ancient cultivation. There is the Patagonian pumpkin, with enormous cylindrical fruit; the sugared pumpkin, called Brazilian; the vegetable marrow, with smaller long-shaped fruit; the Barberine, with knobby fruit; the Elector’s hat, with a curiously shaped conical fruit, etc. No value should be attached to the local names in this designation of varieties, for we have often seen that they express as many errors as varieties. The botanical names attributed to the species by Naudin and Cogniaux are numerous, on account of the bad habit which existed not long ago of describing as species purely garden varieties, without taking into account the wonderful effects of cultivation and selection upon the organ for the sake of which the plant is cultivated.
Most of these varieties exist in the gardens of the warm and temperate regions of both hemispheres. The origin of the species is considered to be doubtful. I hesitated in 1855[1263] between Southern Asia and the Mediterranean basin. Naudin and Cogniaux[1264] admit Southern Asia as probable, and the botanists of the United States on their side have given reasons for their belief in an American origin. The question requires careful investigation.